


As Loud as the Things Unsaid (or The Lights are Out)

by Clipped_Ionian_Vowels



Series: Enemies with Benefits [2]
Category: Red Dwarf
Genre: Aren't we all?, Dirty Talk, Enemies With Benefits, Enemies to Lovers, M/M, Season/Series 01, and horny, as far as I'm aware, discovery kink (referenced), flirty banter, no/few spoilers for anything past series 1, sex that isn't sex, space weevils, they're both repressed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2019-08-06
Packaged: 2020-08-10 19:17:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20140627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clipped_Ionian_Vowels/pseuds/Clipped_Ionian_Vowels
Summary: If only they could both stop thinking about what had happened. Then perhaps it wouldn't need to happen again.But they can't stop thinking about it, and what it didn't mean, and what it won't mean when they do it again.In short, Rimmer and Lister continue to take advantage of the benefits of holography, and continue to ignore anything that starts with 'fee-' and ends with '-lings'.





	As Loud as the Things Unsaid (or The Lights are Out)

**Author's Note:**

> As usual, I really intended this to be shorter. Blame the space weevils.  
Meant as a direct sequel to ‘The Nothing that Happened’. It can be read as a stand-alone, but makes more sense if you’ve already read the first part of this series. My eternal thanks to Armae, whose polite demand for the next instalment prompted me to dig this out of storage and actually tidy it up properly.  
(Very few/no spoilers for anything past series 1).  
Enjoy!

When Rimmer woke up, he initially thought that he had gone blind. His repeated call of ‘lights’ didn’t seem to be doing anything other than fuelling a small snickering sound that was coming from the direction of the breakfast table.

He snarled and turned over. The entire room was swathed in heavy velvet darkness, with the stump of a candle glowing merrily - but pathetically - in the gloom.

By its light, Rimmer could just barely make out Lister shovelling cornflakes into his mouth and the Cat having what appeared to be a small identity crisis by the breakfast table.

Rising cautiously, he asked for day clothes. He gave Holly a good five seconds to comply, and then sighed. Pyjamas it was then.

The room was too dark to even contemplate completing his morning exercises, so instead he made his cautious way over to the others, hoping that Lister had a jolly good explanation for all of this.

“Morning,” he said slowly, watching the Cat grip the edge of his mirror in the darkness, fall dramatically on to it and then look up, eyes reflecting strangely at him, “I see we’ve gone in for some mood lighting today; very avant-garde. Perhaps just a tad ahead of its time, but who knows? Maybe it will catch on,”

“Switchboard’s fused,” Lister replied to the unasked question around a mouthful of cornflakes, “Holly’s looking into it,”

“Fan-smegging-tastic. What’s down then?”

“Let a guy have his breakfast, Rimmer,” Lister said, rolling his eyes.

“Touchy,”

Lister sighed and put down his spoon.

“Lights, electrical outlets, dispense points and vending machines. Hol’s working on the software issues but I’ve been up since 3am trying to fix the hardware. It’s the space weevils – they keep gnawing through the cables,”

“You should knock up another batch of your bug repellent,”

“My what?”

“You know, that stuff I’ve seen you chucking into the waste disposal. The greeny, orangey stuff,”

Lister scratched his chin.

“I believe you call it ‘space curry surprise’, so aptly named because it’s a surprise that it doesn’t kill you dead on sight?”

“Hey, my space curry surprise is a work of culinary artistry!”

“Kills the weevils though, doesn’t it?”

Lister shrugged.

“Can’t make it I’m afraid – we’re out of blue cheese,” Lister’s words trailed off into a yawn, and he looked morosely into the cup of orange juice that sat next to his arm.

Rimmer noticed his expression.

“What on Io has that cup of orange juice done to you?”

“It’s not coffee; none of the kettles will turn on,” Lister switched his breakfast hand to another dish and scooped a teaspoon of something into his mouth. Through the gloom, Rimmer could just about make out what appeared to be a small mound of instant coffee granules heaped into an ashtray.

Rimmer’s lip curled as Lister continued to crunch the coffee, making various faces of disgust as he did so.

“It’s really not the same,” Lister sighed, swallowing his mouthful.

“You think you have problems?” The Cat sullenly raised his head over the edge of the table, covering his hair with both of his hands, “What am I supposed to plug my hair-style essentials into _now? _My straightener, my dryer, my curling tongs – I can’t go out like this! And the darkness is making me all jumpy – I feel like I want to-“ The Cat suddenly pounced on a flickering shadow, then stared down in horror at himself.

“Anyway,” Rimmer continued, unimpressed and blatantly ignoring the Cat. “You were really up at 3am? I didn’t know you _could _be awake at that time,”

“Yeah, ha ha. Holly woke me, the bastard,”

“He didn’t wake_ me_,”

“Not much you could do, is there? I mean, being a hologram and everything,” _Not to mention you slept through his wake-up call, _Lister thought.

“Oh thank you so much for sneaking in the reminder that I’m _dead,” _Rimmer sniped, “And I’ll have you know that my project management skills are second to none,” he paused, hearing a quiet bleep from his bee. A thought suddenly struck him, “The Holosuite isn’t affected, is it?”

“Not as far as we can tell. There’s the possibility of a few glitches, but it’s unlikely. Your charging point is down though, so I hope you’ve got some battery left on your bee,”

“I should be alright for another couple of hours,” Rimmer said, attempting to sit down on the chair that was always left untucked from the table, and promptly falling through it.

“Forgot to mention,” Lister smiled behind his spoon of cornflakes and peered down at Rimmer through the darkness, “Holographic objects are off until further notice. Holly needs all his processing power,”

“You ‘forgot to mention’ did you? And how much would one smegging chair cost him?” Rimmer seethed, resigning himself to the irritating affair of balancing himself on the chair’s molecules instead of trying to sit on it. Eventually his projection settled, content for the time being to recognise the chair as an object.

“Hey, be thankful that I convinced him to let you keep your mattress,”

“Oh very, smegging helpful I’m _sure!_ I’m not going to be spending the whole day in bed now, am I?”

“I should be so lucky,” Lister managed a whole second without realising the alternative interpretation of what he’d said, then choked on his cornflakes. The meaning clearly hadn’t been lost on Rimmer either, since the yelp and ensuing crackle of static confirmed that Rimmer had fallen through the chair again.

The Cat looked at the floored Rimmer with supreme disinterest.

The floored Rimmer resolutely did not think about spending a day in bed with Lister.

“Did you want any help with the repairs?” Rimmer’s voice floated up from the darkness by the chair and he stood too quickly, giving himself light-rush as his projection crackled and reanimated back from the ground up. He coughed and steadied himself, brushing his knees with aggressive strokes. It was the behaviour of a man who had just been spooked by an innuendo, and was trying to convince everyone in the room that he was most definitely _not _spooked.

“Sure, yeah, thanks man… I’ll just finish my brekkie. Fancy giving us a hand, Cat?”

The Cat’s eyes shone at them in the darkness, a wild look coming about him before he suddenly skittered from the room.

“I’ll take that as a ‘no’,” Lister sighed, sounding anything but surprised. “Should have used the laser on the end of the spirit level; he generally responds pretty well to that,”

“The darkness has sent him loopy – we’ll find him hunting spark plugs in the drive room before we know it,”

“Well, he is a cat. It’s probably some sort of primal ancestry thing, right?”

Rimmer grunted.

“I can’t see why he can’t just ignore it – you don’t see us being slaves to our primal instincts-“ Rimmer leapt about three feet in the air and shrieked “-_smegging hell! _What in smeg’s name was that?” A cold blast of air had suddenly blown through the darkness and into his projection, activating his overly sensitive fight-or-flight reflex (always distinctly tilted in favour of ‘flight’).

“Hmm?” Lister grinned at the irony before frowning down at the breeze that was playing with his dreadlocks and attempting to blow out the candle “Oh bloody hell, seems like the temp-control might have been disrupted by the power outage. That’s another hour of work at least,”

Rimmer twisted his arms into a pretzel shape, peering at the vent that had emitted the unpleasant breeze.

“Yes, I’d appreciate you fixing that one as quickly as possible,”

“Didn’t realise you could feel breezes,” Lister noted, tucking back into his cornflakes and shielding the candle with a hand.

“My lightbee can. Stick me on a windy cliff and there’s a real risk of me being blown clean off,”

“Well well. Remind me of that next time we’re near a cliff,” Lister grinned up at him cheekily, before looking back down at his cornflakes, “Still, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised; you can feel me, after all,”

Rimmer’s nostrils flared so widely that bats could have roosted there. His eyes twitched and his mouth seemed to be trying to decide which insult would make his tongue sharp enough to slice Lister’s head from his shoulders.

But the memory of the referenced event sent the insults dying in his throat and all that came out was a startled huff of air.

It wasn’t the words that Lister had said, it was what they implied.

It had been a little over a week ago and Rimmer was well on his way to repressing the event out of existence, but Lister kept bringing it up in accidental, subtle ways that had them both flushing red.

Because Lister wasn’t wrong. Lister was right, for _once _in his miserable little existence. Rimmer_ could _feel Lister. Or, almost feel him. In a manner of speaking. What’s more, much to his own disgust, Rimmer _enjoyed_ it.

Had enjoyed it too smegging much.

Had enjoyed the moment when he’d merged his essence with Lister’s, they’d sunk into each other, burning together and-oh god, didn’t that sound filthy? It hadn’t been sex of course. There had been similar results perhaps, but there the similarities ended. Rimmer would have…they would have stopped it before it was sex. Because this wasn’t about sex. It was about… about… what exactly was it about?

Well, whatever it had been, it most certainly wasn’t happening again. In fact, they had tacitly agreed that it had not, in-fact, _happened _and therefore didn’t need to be thought of. Rimmer nodded brusquely to himself and hastily squashed the small wail of disappointment that floated up from his libido. It was _Lister_ for crying out loud.

_Lister. _

He sighed quietly.

Lister appeared not to have noticed Rimmer’s internal journey to the soul. He shovelled the last spoon of cereal into his mouth and stretched, yawning widely.

“Right, I suppose I’d better carry on,”

“Righto,” Rimmer mentally shook himself, tamping down every notion that even dared to suggest the thing-that-should-not-be-thought, “I’ll fetch the skutters,”

“Oh god, don’t bring the skutters,”

“They have to _learn _Listy!”

“Last time you said that, I nearly lost an eye! The time before that, I nearly lost my leg!”

“See? They’re getting better,”

“Yeah, if I’m really lucky I might just get away with inconsequential third degree burns and a slap on the bum,”

“Well you can like it or lump it, Miladdo. How luxurious it must be to just be able to _hold _things; I am stuck with skutters for hands, you moronic scouser bog-slime. You think _you _don’t like them – imagine relying on them to interact with the world for you,”

Lister couldn’t be bothered to argue with him, and he supposed that he almost had a point. In the barest sort of way. Silently, he resolved to fix the soup machines before Rimmer could catch him and encourage the skutters to ‘help’. Surprisingly, third degree burns weren’t high on his list of priorities.

He dumped his empty bowl into the sink and grabbed his torch before whistling his way tunelessly down the corridor, leaving Rimmer to fume and locate the blue bastards in peace. Fifteen minutes went by. Then twenty. Lister had become so absorbed in his task that he barely noticed the time passing until Rimmer loudly cleared his throat behind him.

Lister promptly banged his head on the inside of a service shaft.

He groaned in pain, and Rimmer had the decency to look slightly guilty as he wriggled out of the shaft and glared at him.

“Where are the skutters?” Lister shone the torch around him suspiciously, searching for any early warning signs of bodily harm.

“Just coming,”

Sure enough, there was the sound of mechanical whirring, slowly getting louder and echoing down the corridor.

Lister frowned at the expression on Rimmer’s face. There was a sort of hidden _look_ there, something that was trying to be quiet but kept leaking out through the lopsided twitch of Rimmer’s mouth.

“Tadah!” Rimmer finally announced, as the skutters rounded the corner. Lister shone the beam of his torch at them, feeling more than a little apprehensive. Between them, they held a tray that wobbled monstrously as they approached, the sound of clinking china echoing chaotically around them. “Steady there, steady. Keep it level! Lovely job, lovely job. Now, hand it over slowly. _Slowly!” _he shrieked as the tray lurched forwards.

By some miracle, nothing broke, but liquid sloshed all over the tray and the small biscuit that lay on a tiny plate. Lister hurriedly relieved the skutters of their load, holding the tray and looking lost as Rimmer glared at the blue creatures.

“Miscreant machines,” Rimmer muttered to himself, examining the amount of liquid left in the white china mug.

“What’s this then?” Lister set the tray down gently, cursing as some boiling hot liquid spilled onto his thumbs. Skutter-induced burns? Check.

“It’s coffee. I should have thought that much was obvious. Although, now I suppose it’s more of a ‘chocolate biscuit and coffee soup’ but you know. Beggars can’t be choosers,”

“You made me coffee? And-” Lister tentatively held up the soggy biscuit, watching as a chunk of it dropped back to the plate, “-And a biscuit?”

“The skutters made you coffee. I supervised,”

“But-“ Lister was still trying to process the fact that Rimmer had done something for someone else, apparently unprompted, “Er, but how? The kettles weren’t working,”

“It’s amazing how much heat is produced by the power banks,” Rimmer looked away, tucking his hands into his pockets and swinging back on his heels, “Probably an absolutely abysmal waste of power but you know, it has its uses,”

“I can’t believe you made me coffee,” Lister shook his head fondly, talking almost to himself as he took a sip and left oily fingerprints on the mug. It wasn’t a half-bad cup of joe.

“The _skutters _made you coffee,” Rimmer insisted, crossing his arms as if he were refusing any part in the matter. “Besides, you’ve been up since three. Even at the best of times you’re prone to smeg-ups and I don’t want my charging point being compromised, Miladdo,”

Inside, Rimmer was cursing himself. It had seemed like a much better idea in his head. Get the skutters to make a cup of coffee, stop Lister from groaning about his lack of caffeination, get repairs done faster. But then with the lengths he’d taken to get the skutters to make the beverage… well, it all looked a little bit like he cared, didn’t it? Which couldn’t possibly be further from the truth.

Lister grinned to himself and they worked in silence for some time, Lister occasionally calling on Holly to check their progress.

Rimmer was still stewing over how the whole coffee thing looked. The biscuit really hadn’t been necessary. Time to set things back in order.

“You’re using the wrong tool for that,” Rimmer said shortly, and Lister groaned at him.

“Oh come off it, Rimmer,”

“No really,” Rimmer said insistently.

Lister’s face bent into an exaggerated scowl.

“Oh yeah?”

“_Yes. _Do you know how important the right tool is for this job, Listy?”

“The only ‘right tool’ I see here is you, mate,”

“Insubordination!”

“Oh yeah? And what are you going to do about it? No higher ups for you to get me in trouble with now, are there?”

“I may not be able to touch you, but I can still make your life very difficult Miladdo, very difficult indeed!”

“And how are you going to do that then? Pop out of dining table while I’m eating my curries? Go all Phantom of the Opera on me and start warbling in the shower? Trust me Rimmer, whatever you can think of to make my life hell, you are probably already _smegging doing it,”_

“I’m just trying to _help _you,” Rimmer snarled back, enraged by Lister’s blasé attitude.

“I wish you wouldn’t,” Lister grumbled. Just then, he caught sight of the nearly empty mug of coffee, and felt almost bad for Rimmer. It must be awful not to be able to touch anything. Perhaps he was being a bit harsh – he had barely slept after all.

“You are _trying _to tighten that screw with a wrench that is exactly one millimetre too big, and it will _not work,_”

Then again, it was very hard to feel sorry for someone who just had such a knack for being horrifically irritating.

“Oh for smeg’s sake, _fine! _Show me this blessed ‘correct tool’ and let’s be done with this,” Lister swung the beam of his torch over the toolbox, holding it there with a petulance borne out of Rimmer-based suffering.

“That one,” Rimmer indicated. Lister tried to follow where his finger was pointing.

“Which one?”

“The A25K!” Rimmer said, as if it should have been obvious.

Lister looked at the ceiling and prayed for deliverance from this situation.

“That one! That one there!” Rimmer’s finger jabbed at the toolbox and Lister sucked in a breath, dipping his hand resolutely into the toolbox and trying to find the wrench that Rimmer was gesticulating at.

“This one?”

“No, you moron!”

“Be more specific then, smeghead!”

“The gun-metal grey one!”

“THEY’RE ALL GREY!”

Tempers high, Rimmer thrust his hand into the toolbox, letting the tip of his finger dip into the correct tool and daring Lister to get it wrong this time.

“That. _One,_” he hissed out through clenched teeth as Lister rolled his eyes disrespectfully and went to take it.

Lister wasn’t sure whether he did it entirely accidentally, but in the brief moment that his hand sank through Rimmer’s, he saw the man shudder and take a sharp breath through his nose, nostrils flaring at the unexpected contact. He wasn’t much better off, as sparks of electricity flowed through his hand and made his pupils wide.

He withdrew his hand quickly, the beam of the torch quivering and swinging wildly around the walls as he turned and attempted to tighten the bolt.

The new wrench seemed to be one millimetre too small, but Lister was happy to force it onto every bolt if it meant he didn’t have to look at Rimmer and have the hologram see the hot blush that had rushed into his cheeks.

They worked in relative silence after that. But the silence felt even louder than any words that had been shouted. It hummed with the acknowledgement of that touch, the acknowledgement of that first time. It really wasn’t that long ago after all.

And Lister, to his own personal disgust, hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it since.

Eventually, they reached a point where they had done as much hardware work as they could.

“Alright dudes, I think we’re good to go. I just want to make a few more tweaks to the software, see if I can introduce colour lighting. Might be able to nick some coding from the Sims, you never know. It’ll be gothic catacomb lighting for now, but everything should be back up in an hour,”

“Thanks Hol,” Lister gave the computer a double thumbs up.

“Yes, thanks very much for nothing, you senile excel document. Fancy letting me have my holographic objects back at any point this year?” Rimmer, cheery as ever, was still in a dreadful mood after his anger at Lister and the tension of the time afterwards. Lister wondered whether there was something more to the anger, and resolved to find out.

“Keep your H on Arnold, I’ll give you your chair,”

“Actually Hol, a quick favour, just while you’re at it with the holographic objects-“ Lister interjected, looking nervously at Rimmer, “Mind laying down a holographic mattress on er…my bed?”

Holly was silent. He looked as if he’d become distracted by something. His head bounced around the screen like a Windows Screensaver.

“Holly?” Lister asked, nerves mounting as Rimmer bored holes in the side of his head with his stare.

“What is it Dave?”

“The holographic mattress?”

“Oh that, I was just sorting through the lighting options in the Sims. Pretty exciting stuff,”

“The mattress Holly? The smegging mattress?”

“Keep your hair on. Or your dreads. Keep your dreads on,” Holly made a face of mild concentration. “There. One holographic mattress. Keep it PG-13 you two,”

Holly winked out.

“I will kill him, and then I will kill you,” Rimmer said, very very quietly, advancing on Lister until his back hit the corridor wall.

“Oh come on Rimmer,” Lister tried to laugh, even as Rimmer’s face pulled in close to his own, “Perhaps I just asked for the mattress because it’s comfier?”

“Perhaps? _Perhaps?”_ Rimmer’s voice crept an octave higher.

“Look, you can’t possibly maim me until you train a skutter to hold a knife, and their fine motor skills just aren’t that good,”

“I’m sure it wouldn’t take long for me to convince the Cat to raise arms against you,”

Rimmer was so close now, as close as he could get without touching Lister, his arms bracketing him in and preventing him escaping. Lister suddenly noticed how Rimmer’s breathing was heavy, how his arms shook ever so slightly. How his face was red and flushed.

“You want it too, don’t you?” he whispered, knowing that he might well be taking his life into his hands.

There was a pause. A pause that felt like an infinity had made its way into a black hole and the two of them were having difficulties with the metaphysics of the situation. A pause that lasted forever, and no time at all.

Finally, Lister heard a quiet, broken ‘_Yes,’ _tear itself from Rimmer’s throat as he surged forwards, pressing himself into Lister with a despairing, desperate groan of need. 

Lister gave into the motion, thrilling as he felt Rimmer’s molecules align with his own, pressing them both against the cool metal of the corridor and closing his eyes in bliss. Smeg but he’d wanted this, _needed _this. This perfect synchronicity, this alignment of souls, of bodies, of heat. And he was so smegging, bloody relieved that somehow they were back here, that they were letting each other do this, that he could feel Rimmer _wanting _it just like he did.

“Not here,” he gasped, trying to hold on to reason as Rimmer pulled away and looked at him desperately. “There’s a holographic mattress with your name on it,”

Rimmer frowned at him, opening his mouth to try and say something that would make this all sound less intentional, less laden with implication.

“Come on,” Lister mouthed at him, gaze sliding quickly down to Rimmer’s groin and back up again.

“Fine,” Rimmer pushed himself off the wall, taking himself fully out of Lister and trying not to shudder at the loss of contact. Dull reality slipping back in as he walked briskly down the corridor, simply passing through items that Lister had to be careful to step over in the darkness.

Rimmer hesitated at the entrance to the bunkroom. The lights were still dead and only the beam of Lister’s torch illuminated anything.

“Bit dark, isn’t it?” Lister chuckled nervously.

“Scared?”

The word echoed about them, growing in meaning until it cowed them both into silence.

“Shall I light a couple of candles?”

“Ha! Yes fine,” Rimmer made a high-pitched nervous noise that sounded like it once might have been a laugh but had since taken to shooting up Valium at the weekends.

“Relax,” Lister said quietly, striking a match and watching as the small bead of light illuminated the space around them.

“Bit hard, with you making all these preparations. Candles, I mean, _really,_”

“It’s not ‘preparation’, it’s so I can bloody _see,”_

Rimmer grunted, not quite conceding the point, but close enough.

“Shoes off,” Lister said.

“Unlike you, I’m not an animal,” Rimmer grumbled, placing his shoes neatly at the foot of his bed and standing with his hands on his hips.

“Did you want to do this then?” Lister asked, shaking the match to blow it out and tossing it on to the table as he looked over his shoulder at Rimmer. Rimmer looked back, vision momentarily obscured by the wisp of smoke that floated through him, as Lister shucked off his jacket.

“You’re not stripping, are you?”

“You’d know if I was stripping,” Lister said, innuendo dropping his voice low for a second before he shook his head, “Don’t panic man, I’m just getting a bit more comfortable,”

“Right, of course,”

Rimmer looked down at himself, assessing his outfit for several moments before loosening his tie and letting it disappear.

“Up you hop then,” Lister patted the top bunk, leaning in towards Rimmer with a soft, genuine smile just about visible on his face.

Rimmer licked his lips subconsciously, finally letting out a breath that he didn’t think he was holding as he climbed up to the upper bunk. Even with the dulled sensation of everything as a hologram, the bunk smelt distinctly of Lister. Curry, of course, and cigarettes, but with a sort of sweet, barely there base note undercutting everything.

He didn’t have long to contemplate the smell of Lister, before the man had flung himself up after him. The shadows cast by the low-light were long and dramatic and gave the strange illusion that they were in their own tiny universe, floating in a sea of black.

Lister smiled at him again and he offered a tentative smile back.

Before either of them could shout for the door to lock however, it swished open and the Cat scuttled in.

“It’s still dark!” he howled at Lister. Rimmer lay very _very_ still behind him, trying to physically disappear into the fabric of the universe, “I thought you were fixing it! It’s like constant night time. Cats aren’t built for constant night time! How am I supposed to sleep if I can’t have my five daytime naps!”

“Holly said the lights would be back in an hour; make the most of it while you can,”

“An hour! But I’m not finished hunting space weevils! They’re tricky you know… I’d better step up my schedule-“ The Cat pulled out a small pocketbook, sticking a pink pencil between his teeth. Rimmer looked upwards and prayed for deliverance.

“Hey buddy,” the Cat said as he started to leave, “You haven’t seen goalpost head, have you?”

“Nope!” Lister said, far too quickly. He was fairly sure his voice hadn’t sounded like that since he was fourteen.

“Damn! I wanted to show him my new earring,” The Cat unsubtly waggled his head in Lister’s direction.

Lister obediently observed the earring. It looked ever-so-slightly like a spark plug but he dutifully oohed and aahed until the Cat had flounced his way smugly out of the room.

The door swished shut and Lister shouted “Lock!” so quickly that the Cat would have been suspicious, if the Cat had ever cared to be suspicious about anything not directly related to him.

“Good grief,” Rimmer breathed deeply, his eyes connecting with Lister’s as they sparkled with mischief.

“Yeah,” Lister agreed, his own answering sigh rolling out of him, “So where were we?” he said, mock thoughtful as he climbed over Rimmer and looked down into his face, careful not to let any part of him touch the man just yet.

Rimmer felt his mouth go dry as Lister leant closer. The space in the bunk was naturally cramped, but it didn’t exactly matter when you were both going to be lying in the same space anyway. But right now, Rimmer could almost convince himself that this wasn’t just a fancy wank – this was something dangerous. Dangerous, because if it had stopped feeling like a parody of sex, and if Rimmer was still desperate for it, then what on Io did that say about him? About them?

“Lister,” Rimmer whispered quietly, as the man’s lips hovered over his own. How easy it was to believe that he could be kissed.

He didn’t have long to think about it before Lister had plunged into him. Never one to hesitate the moment, Lister might have been scared, but he wasn’t about to delay things for any longer than he had to.

And it had been worth it.

Rimmer smiled despite himself, tilting his head back and closing his eyes for a moment as Lister got comfortable. It wasn’t long before Lister’s thoughts began invading his own mind, distorted and blurry, like most thoughts are, and entirely characteristic of Lister.

Lister let out a breathy sigh, muscles tingling as he lay back, seeing the world through Rimmer, feeling the world through him.

But this wasn’t supposed to be about Rimmer.

“Yeah?” Lister managed to say, breaking through the echoes of their minds.

“Yes,” came the decisive response, the permission they both needed before their hands were flying to their groins and relieved huffs of air started puffing into the space in front of them.

Lister could feel the way Rimmer’s lips were moving, gasping around inarticulate syllables. To Lister’s surprise, a sudden thought about a three-million year old gas bill floated to the forefront of his mind and he almost laughed out loud. Trust Rimmer to let anxieties creep in at a time like this.

“Stop thinking,” he breathed, a laugh rumbling his chest as Rimmer hurriedly course corrected and his thoughts became hazy and lust filled again.

“Sorry,” Rimmer apologised, screwing his brow in concentration before his forehead smoothed over again. He watched the canvas of their shared minds fill with strange images, and nearly smiled as he saw one of himself, just lying in his bunk, doing nothing much, reading some sort of astro-navigation book, “You’re thinking of me,” he said, in a quiet sort of surprise.

Lister froze, terrified that Rimmer had caught him in some sort of indiscretion, Rimmer-specific thoughts of sex that weren’t supposed to be part of their encounter. Smeg knew he’d been having them rather frequently since the last time.

He was quiet for a moment, watching their thoughts intermingle and praying that he hadn’t made this more awkward than it already had the potential to be.

“You’re thinking of me,” he murmured back, breathy and factual, as he watched a blurry suggestion of himself float into Rimmer’s consciousness. It was a quick image, perhaps Rimmer trying to make him feel better, but Lister couldn’t help a tiny grin as he noticed the blurriness of the image sharpen ever so slightly around his crotch.

Rimmer’s hand stilled then, and Lister could feel the hot blush that was burning the other man’s skin. He knew what Lister had seen. Nothing particularly filthy, but something that they had both agreed this wasn’t about.

Each other.

Throwing caution to the wind, Lister hurriedly constructed an image of Rimmer in his ridiculous tighty-whities, stroking himself more insistently and relaxing as Rimmer’s hand moved warily back to resume its hurried progress.

“Don’t worry,” Lister huffed into the air between them, trying to reassure Rimmer, even as his thoughts began to scatter with the build of pleasure.

Rimmer screwed his eyes shut but eventually made a small murmur of acceptance, an agreement to not take the conversation any further, to pretend it hadn’t happened. To leave their respective thoughts to each other. 

Whatever those thoughts might be. And, Lister supposed that it didn’t really matter. In moments like these, all that mattered was getting off, and whatever dirty ways you could think of to achieve that result.

It wasn’t a reflection of what you actually wanted.

_It’s not a reflection of what we actually want. _

Rimmer hummed his agreement to the thought, before the noise caught in his throat and turned into a barely constrained moan and Lister could practically feel his arousal spike.

He responded in kind with his own litany of noises, semi-performative in nature, but genuine nonetheless, waiting to hear the next gasp of endorsement from Rimmer. They might as well use all the aids on hand, after all. And really, picturing Rimmer was actually starting to… oh sod it.

“Fuck, Rimmer,” Lister gasped, “Oh fuck,”

Rimmer stilled a moment, alarmed by the volume that had interfered with their whispered universe.

“Don’t stop,” Lister insisted, “Smegging hell, don’t stop,”

A whine stroked the top of Lister’s mouth, almost a tangible force as Rimmer hurried to resume his movements.

“Oh my god Rimmer, smegging hell,” Lister was rapidly losing the small amount of control that he had over his speech, volume increasing as his words decreased in sense. Rimmer’s whines throbbing within him were growing in frequency and everything sparkled with clarity_, _even as it was totally fogged by lust.

Lister felt as Rimmer’s toes curled into the bed and he arched against the mattress, Rimmer’s abortive sighs and groans panting into the air above them. It was the momentary visual of Rimmer, lying there in Lister’s bed, shadowed in the candle light, thrashing amongst Lister’s clothes and Lister’s bedsheets and letting Lister do this to him that finally sent Lister careening over the edge.

Lister yelled as he came, eyes screwed shut and visuals of Rimmer still burning in his chest. He grabbed at the bedsheets, listening to Rimmer, calling out to him as his body flooded with pleasure.

After a moment it was all over and he flopped onto his back, running a hand up his forehead as his heart throbbed and he let out a long, slow, satisfied breath of air.

Rimmer shuffled out of him, pressing against the side of the bunk wall as he looked at Lister’s profile. The low light made the moment strangely surreal, and almost romantic, if Rimmer had been the kind of person who believed in that sort of thing.

He had to do something. Say something. The noise of the things unsaid was unbearable.

“You’re so loud,” Rimmer smiled up at the bunk ceiling but quickly caught himself, turning the expression into a belligerent scowl. “Before we know it, Holly will be on us, worried that I’ve finally found a way to strangle you,”

“Oh my bad, man. Here I was, thinking you got off on it,” Lister knew he was being risky, but the endorphins made it easier to be cheeky and flirtatious. Too easy.

“Why, you little-_,_” Rimmer wasn’t entirely sure what threat he was implying, but he was sure that it would be painful.

“Watch it, or I’ll tell Holly _exactly _why I wanted a holographic mattress,” Rimmer scowled at him and crossed his arms, making a big show of turning on to his side to face the wall.

“He probably already knows,” Rimmer muttered, embarrassment burning him from the inside-out.

Lister shrugged, neither acknowledging nor denying it.

Rimmer remained quiet for several more minutes, quietly seething to himself and eventually exploding with a claim of: “Besides, I don’t _get off _on it; you’re just a narcissist!”

“Oi come on Rimmer,” Lister rolled his eyes, “it’s nothing to be ashamed of… I get off on the noises you make,”

Rimmer stiffened, disbelief making his muscles tense, embarrassment melting his stomach to jelly and a strange subdued interest making his groin stir mutinously.

“You don’t,” he managed to say, voice suddenly muffled by the bedsheets and the wall.

“I do too! You’re right sexy when you let yourself go, all sighing and groaning and stuff,”

“Oh well, when you put it so eloquently like _that-“_

“You know what I mean. You sound relaxed for once, happy even,”

“I have never once been relaxed in my life and you of all people should know that. Besides, why does all this matter anyway? It’s not like we’re having _sex_,”

“No, course it isn’t,” Rimmer could almost _hear _Lister rolling his eyes and angrily flopped back around to face him. He stared daggers at Lister’s presumptuous little face, but the gimboid only smiled innocently back at him. “Admit it, Rimmer. You’d like it if I was _begging_ you for _more_. _Faster_, _yes,” _Lister bit his lip, his eyes hooded and filled with sparks of mischief. Rimmer couldn’t help the way his face flamed hot, but Lister wouldn’t take the hint, only taking the colour as a commendation and continuing. “Oh _smeg _Rimmer, _fuck, _oh fuck _yes,”_

Eyes fixed on Rimmer’s, Lister slipped a hand down to his underwear, rubbing slowly against it as he proceeded to put on the most filthy show that Rimmer had ever seen. He couldn’t stop watching, torn between watching Lister rub against himself and watching Lister’s face, those obscene noises distorting his mouth and pounding against Rimmer’s ears like a tide of molasses, pinning him down and forcing him to _watch,_ to _listen. _Forcing him to _respond. _

“Oh _fuck,_” Lister closed his eyes briefly as he pulled his underwear down and finally grabbed his cock, before fixing his gaze firmly on Rimmer’s again, grinning as he bit his lip and moaned like a pornstar

Rimmer’s breath had shallowed, coming in quiet little pants as he watched Lister take them both apart.

“_Touch yourself,” _Lister said, whetting his lips and readjusting the arm that was propping him up, “_please?”_

“You are an utter bastard,” Rimmer groaned, even as his traitorous hands began to wrestle with the newly fastened buckle of his trousers.

“Knew you had more than one round in you,” Lister grinned, looking down at Rimmer’s crotch as the hologram struggled with the finer details of softlight technology. “You know, apart from the… merging? And that one time you foisted your body on me, I think this will be the first time I’ve properly seen your-“

“Shut the smeg up, or you won’t be seeing anything else today except for the inside of a plastic bag with ‘suffocation risk’ written on the outside,” Rimmer glared at him, hands stilling on his trousers and making the point that he was being absolutely serious here.

Lister held his hands up in surrender.

“Shall I keep going with the noises then?”

“You can do whatever the smeg you like, Miladdo, but I’m going to have a wank. Irrespective of you and whatever noises you might make while I’m at it,”

“Is that permission to watch?”

“Well if you don’t fancy “merging” again. Speaking of which, can we think of a better name for that? It sounds like we’re two cars on the M21,”

“It does, doesn’t it?” Lister chuckled, taking his cock in hand again and stroking it lazily as he watched Rimmer getting increasingly frustrated with the fastenings of his trousers. Softlight technology apparently had some sort of desire to keep Rimmer clothed and it was rather entertaining. “Why don’t you just ask Holly to take those off?”

“And let him find me in bed with you? Oh good idea, I _don’t _think,”

Lister stuck his tongue between his teeth and grinned.

“Does it turn you on? The idea of being discovered?”

“…No,” Rimmer paused for rather a long time before he delivered his answer shortly, even as his recently freed cock bounced in interest.

“Hm, I think it does a bit. Just a little bit. Maybe one day, when we’re all sat at the breakfast table, one of my hands might just accidentally land in your crotch. You won’t be able to say anything of course, but you’ll go that lovely pink colour and maybe I’ll start moving my hand a bit, just teasing. And smeg you’ll want to speak but if you say anything the others will _know-“_

“Who’s to say it won’t be my hand in _your _crotch,” Rimmer suggested, quirking an eyebrow at Lister as the other man’s hand stuttered on his cock in surprise, “And it wouldn’t be an accident if I did it. Oh no. It would be deliberate, one of those days where you’re wearing those awful longjohns that hide _nothing. _That would teach you a lesson. You’d have to stay sat down behind that table to stop the others seeing, and I’d pick a day where you had first shift, so you’d have to choose between standing up and embarrassing yourself, or staying sat down and letting me make you finish right there. And you don’t have the sort of self-control that I do; I bet you wouldn’t be able to stop making those utterly excessive noises that you’d have to explain to the others and you’d just be getting more flustered, more turned on by the whole thing, wouldn’t you?”

“_Ye-yeah,” _Lister breathed, looking at Rimmer in wonder.

“Shush, I’m not finished,” Rimmer had fallen into his stride now, mind whirling with the racy scenario, “Perhaps I’d even set my lightbee to vibrate, move it to my hand. You wouldn’t be able to stand that for long, would you? Not if it was pressed against you. You feel _everything _that touches you and you’re so-“ Rimmer’s gaze flickered, unbidden, to Lister’s cock.

“Big?” Lister suggested.

“Self-confident,” Rimmer corrected, narrowing his eyes and sighing as he readjusted himself on the bed. “Though I was going to say ‘sensitive’. Somehow, I don’t think you’d be able to hide what was happening for very long… Shall I do that to you one day Listy?” he finished in a teasing whisper, smiling cruelly as Lister replayed the scenario in his head, groaning softly at the mental imagery and looking at Rimmer through a haze of lust.

“You cheeky smegger,” Lister said, words interspersed with harsh breaths, “Since when have you been able to talk dirty?”

“Since discovering your collection of Flintstone’s fanfiction,” Rimmer tried to be blasé, but found that he was rather more affected by the imagined scenario than he realised. And Lister’s increasingly sexed groans were hardly helping matters.

“Fuck me,” Lister’s voice wobbled out in a near-orgasmic laugh at the admission, before devolving into another set of groans, increasing in pitch and volume as he worked himself into a mad frenzy at the imagined scenario.

“May I?” Rimmer asked quickly, voice hurried and gasping, Lister’s eyes sliding open as the hologram gestured at Lister’s body.

“Oh god yes please,” Lister purred, letting Rimmer roll into him and overlap their bodies, revelling in the pulse of unity that soared through him and took them both right to the edge.

It only took a second for them both to fall apart, calling each other’s names as their hands spasmed on the bedsheets and pleasure tore through them.

Rimmer blinked lazily as he came back to himself, letting Lister roll out of him.

“Good?” he murmured.

“It was bloody fantastic and you know it,” Lister snorted, muttering something that sounded like ‘attention-seeker’ under his breath. “Can’t believe you can dirty talk,”

“A lifetime of not having a sexual partner will do wonders for your creativity,” Rimmer murmured, stretching languidly. “But I really wasn’t bad, was I?” he preened, and Lister couldn’t help smiling fondly at him. He knew how self-conscious the hologram had to be about anything vaguely related to sex, and even though this was some sort of strange, half-way house that they had both agreed _wasn’t _sex, Lister couldn’t help feeling strangely proud of Rimmer. Proud, and irritated beyond measure, as well as just straight-up aroused by him. It was a strange phenomenon.

“I wish I could touch you,” Lister said wistfully, cringing at how the words sounded when he said them out loud. They had sounded so much less meaningful in his head.

“I know,” Rimmer said quietly, eyes closed, lips barely moving around the words. “If there was only one thing I could touch in the world – anything - I’d want it to be you.”

And before Lister could get over his surprise at the show of genuine affection, at the total lack of malice or spite or teasing insult, before he could acknowledge any of these things and begin to process what Rimmer had said, a quiet snore showed that the man was asleep.

He stayed silent for some time, mind whirring with thoughts and emotions, eyes lingering on the soft expression on Rimmer’s face, the lowlight casting his eyes in deep shadow and highlighting the barest edges of his cheekbones. Finally, he sat up and reached towards the end of the bed, pulling the sheet up with him.

“Holly,” he whispered.

The computer flickered into life.

“Yes Dave?”

“Mind rigging up a holographic duvet?”

“You’re getting soft,”

“Smeg off, I don’t want him waking me up because he’s cold,”

“I hope you know what you’re doing,”

“I don’t. Will you do the duvet or not?”

“Fine. I imagine you don’t really care that each holographic addition is another drain on my power supply and IQ score,”

“I’m sure you can afford to drop a couple of points. Five hundred and ninety PE teachers is better than nothing,”

“Five hundred and ninety PE teachers is better than the entire crew doubled,” Holly muttered mutinously, sighing as a sheen of electricity bubbled over the duvet. “I hope it fills your hair with static and gives you an electric shock when you get out of bed,"

“Thanks Hol,” Lister said quietly, pulling the blanket over them both and sighing as Holly disappeared from the room.

Lister briefly considered moving into Rimmer’s bunk – the space in here was really very tight and they’d probably spend all night waking up _in _each other if he didn’t. He could do with a shower too. But it was so peaceful now… a nap couldn’t hurt.

He was asleep within seconds, Rimmer’s words echoing in his mind.

_If there was only one thing I could touch in the world – anything - I’d want it to be you._

Shortly after, they were both woken by the piercing brightness of the lights coming back online and Rimmer sent himself into a frenzy worrying about the candles that they’d left lit. The vents howled like lost werewolves, putting out the candles almost instantly as cold breezes gushed through the room.

Rimmer was poised to jump down from the bed, steadfastly refusing to look at Lister, before a noise from the ground halted him in his tracks.

They watched in silence as a space weevil scuttled across the floor, turned to look at them, then scuttled away under one of the cupboards. 

“Well,” Rimmer deadpanned, “There’s your discovery kink fulfilled,” A soft smile touched his face as Lister dissolved into a fit of laughter and Rimmer clambered down to his own bunk. He left his hand resting on the top rail of the ladder for a moment longer than he meant to, giving Lister just enough time to slide his own on top of it.

Rimmer inhaled sharply and looked up at him.

“Goodnight Rimmer,” Lister said softly.

“L-lights,” Rimmer stammered, pulling his hand quickly out of Lister’s and hurriedly shimmying into bed, trying to ignore the pounding in his chest that had less to do with the touch and far more to do with the way Lister had just looked at him.

Still, it was probably nothing.

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos, comments and spark-plug earrings are heavily encouraged and make me happier than a postman on Sunday.


End file.
